New York officials say the Seneca Meadows landfill in Seneca Falls, the state’s largest landfill, has not been proven to be the cause of elevated lung cancer rates in the surrounding area.
However, that conclusion has done little to calm concerns because the census tract closest to the site recorded the highest rates.
What happened?
According to a state review detailed by FingerLakes1.com, investigators assessed lung cancer rates near the Seneca Meadows landfill and said the evidence did not support tying those cases directly to that facility.
The New York Department of Health analyzed 26 years of data, covering lung cancer diagnoses from 1996 to 2021 across seven census tracts surrounding the landfill. The agency found higher-than-expected lung cancer rates among men in all seven tracts and among women in six of these tracts…